Furniture such as doors and cabinets is generally mounted with hinges by means of which a movable member of the furniture can be opened or closed with respect to the main body of the furniture. For example, the Background of the Invention section of the specification of U.S. Pat. No. 8,689,402 B2 states that a furniture hinge typically includes a spring for generating a closing and/or opening force and that, however, the spring may break after the furniture hinge has been used for a while. To overcome this drawback of the conventional furniture hinges, the aforesaid patent discloses a furniture hinge with a sliding element. More specifically, the furniture hinge (100) disclosed in the embodiments and drawings (e.g., FIG. 1, FIG. 2, FIG. 3a, FIG. 3b, and FIG. 6) of the aforesaid patent has a fitting (101) and a hinge cup (102) to be opened or closed with respect to each other. The furniture hinge (100) also includes a spring (2) having an end portion mounted with a sliding element (1). When the hinge cup (102) is opened or closed with respect to the fitting (101), the end portion of the spring (2) is in movable contact with a cam (3) via the sliding element (1). According to this arrangement, the end portion of the spring (2) is in contact with the cam (3) via the sliding element (1) and is therefore less likely to break than its prior art counterparts. Nevertheless, the furniture hinge (100) has its shortcomings as explained below. The end portion of the spring (2, 12) has a circular cross section, and the sliding element (1, 11) has a cylindrical cavity corresponding to the circular cross section so that the end portion of the spring (2, 12) can be mounted in the cavity. To ensure that the sliding element (1, 11) stays in place with respect to the spring (2, 12), the sliding element (1, 11) is engaged in the coils of the spring (2, 12) via an attachment device (4, 14). Obviously enough, the sliding element (1, 11) will fall off the spring (2, 12) if the attachment device (4, 14) is absent. On the other hand, while a circle-to-circle mounting design is used for connecting the sliding element and the spring, the support point is engaged in the coils of the spring via the attachment device of the sliding element. If the mounting tolerance of the support point is improper in relation to the contact angle between the cam and the sliding element, the quality of use of the hinge will be compromised.
It can be known from the above that the mounting and positioning methods of the sliding element affect the quality of use. As the assembly of the various components of a hinge device may have different requirements, the connection between the sliding element and the spring should be taken into account to meet practical needs.